Grey's Anatomy: Grey Matter

Mark Wilding on "Let The Truth Sting"...

The truth.  We like to think there’s only one version of it.  Namely, our own.  But then someone else comes along and they insist on giving you their (generally wrongheaded) version of the truth.  The truth is…there’s all sorts of truths.  The varnished truth.  The unvarnished truth.  The naked truth.  Half-truths.  Whole truths.  And what we finally addressed in this episode.  THE PAINFUL TRUTH.  The kind of truth we don’t always want to hear. 

We all have these ideas of ourselves – of how we are – so when somebody else actually weighs in about us, well, it can be a shock.  I’m going to quote the Scottish poet Robert Burns right now because I’ve always wanted to quote him and I couldn’t really figure how to cram this quote into a birthday toast or a Thanksgiving speech or a piece of wisdom I might pass on to my kids – who wouldn’t want to hear it anyway (that’s my painful truth).  Also it might lend this blog a little more class.  “If only God, the gift he gee us/To see ourselves as others see us.”  Yes, even famous Scottish poets wrote about the painful truth.

Anyway, just about everyone at Seattle Grace has to face the painful truth about themselves in this episode.  Bailey when she has to stand in front of Callie and admit that she’s been having trouble with the pecking order of things.  Callie, who is, my God, hiding from the truth because she can’t bear to hear what she just KNOWS is coming.  Okay, she doesn’t know one hundred percent KNOW, KNOW but she suspects and that’s enough to drive her underground – into the Residents Lounge.  Anything to avoid her cheating husband…

How about Lexie and Meredith?  Meredith’s served a painful, unwelcome dollop of the truth when Bailey tells her that she hasn’t said a kind word to her sister since she arrived at Seattle Grace.  And after that fact settles on Meredith, she decides she has to give Lexie the painful truth about her mother.  Meredith has been so cold to Lexie – in Lexie’s mind at least – that it’s even got her to wondering about the level of care that Susan may have received on the last day of her life.  And that scene where Meredith sits down with Lexie and starts to lay out the facts of her mom’s death – where we see Lexie finally getting the painful truth – well, let’s just say it’s one of my favorite scenes in the show.

A couple of my other favorite scenes involve Izzie and Charlie.  Shonda said she wanted Grey’s to go in a happier, lighter direction this year.  And I think this story was the kind of thing she had in mind.  A patient who wants to die, is in fact DETERMINED to die and…it’s funny and kinda heartbreaking.  And here’s a behind the scenes tidbit.  We hired the actor Jack Axelrod to be Old Guy last year.  The idea was that his room would be the place where our interns could occasionally go to study or eat.  We put Jack in a semi-coma so our gang would essentially have their own private lunch room/study hall. 

During the course of last season, we used Jack to lie in the bed and, well…just lie in the bed.  And he closed his eyes and he would shift in bed, make an occasional mouth sound and he was very good at it.  When we decided to wake him up from his year long sleep, we knew Jack was a professional actor, we just weren’t sure how good a professional actor he’d be.  At least I wasn’t.  But, my God, he was a TERRIFIC actor.  I LOVED him sparring with Izzie.  He was funny and ornery and straightforward and yet compassionate as Charlie.  Especially when it came to telling Izzie the painful truth.  That married men will string you along.  That they’re not always in the habit of telling you the truth.  And as much as Izzie didn’t want to hear what Charlie had to say, she came to appreciate him, even seek him out.  He became her friend.  And frankly, Jack was so good in the part that for a brief, fleeting moment, we even thought maybe we should keep him around.  But in the interest of good storytelling, we just couldn’t.  Which really kinda hurt…

Then there’s the subject of their sparring.  George.  Who starts out determined to tell Callie the painful truth about himself and Izzie but his interaction with Connie and her friends – sometimes the truth can be TOO painful – makes him reconsider, then finally dive in and tell Callie that he slept with Izzie.  Wait until you see him deal with the consequences of that next week.  Allan Heinberg wrote a very funny, very moving episode.  So even if you missed this episode, tune in to that one!  It’s great!

Mark and Derek also trade truths with each other.  Mark has to remind Derek about the truth of his relationship with Meredith.  That maybe he’s fooling himself and she won’t ever be all whole.  And Derek returns the truth-telling favor when he scolds Mark and the Chief for being foolhardy in trying a way too experimental surgery on Connie.  Although, he softens the blow in that same scene when he reminds the Chief to tell Adele the truth about why he wants to move back in.  That he misses her, that she’s all he can think about, etc.  Which is, truth be told, vintage McDreamy.

Finally, we get to see Bailey give our big truth-teller, Alex, the truth.  That there’s a reason we don’t listen to interns – it’s dangerous.  And then if finally falls to Alex to unload on the world’s oldest intern, Norman.  Ed Hermann is great in the part (wait until you see him next week, he’s hysterical).  Ed plays Norman as nice and avuncular and such a sweet soul.  However, despite his advanced age, the truth is Norman has a lot to learn.  After all, he’s still an intern. 

And, as we’ve discovered over the last three seasons, what can be more painful than that?

Mark Wilding on "Desire"

Original airdate: 4-26-07

Desire.  It can wreck your life.  It can be, as Izzie rightly says, your Penis Fish.  It can crawl up inside you and… yeah, you pretty much know the rest… So that’s what I’m gonna talk about in this blog.  Desire and the metaphor we came up with to represent it.  The Candiru.  Or Penis Fish.  I won’t call it a Candiru.  I’ll call it a Penis Fish because that’s a lot funnier to say than Candiru.  I’m not sure if Penis Fish should be capitalized, but if you had one in you, you’d probably think it’d be worth capitalizing.  In fact, ALL the letters in it probably deserve to be capitalized.  PENIS FISH.  However, I don’t want to be accused of sensationalism so we’ll just keep it at Penis Fish.

First some background.  My personal desire has been to do this story for a long time.  In fact, it’s been the whole writing staff’s desire.  We actually had the story in a couple of previous scripts but it never quite worked out.  It either didn’t work with the theme of the episode or we’d just done a show with someone having penis troubles and we didn’t want to do penis overload, as it were. 

Second, the Penis Fish is a real thing.  It’s more of a parasite than a fish.  It likes to swim up the little eddies created by a fish’s gills.  Then it stops and latches on to the insides of the unsuspecting fish.  The unsuspecting, unlucky fish.  And then it, well… feeds.  Yeah.  Very yucchy.  It’s found in South America.  However, unlike, say, telenovellas, it’s not coming to America anytime soon.  You will not find it at your local swimming hole or the YMCA.  It’s strictly Amazon.  But it does exist.  Look hard enough on the Internet and you’ll find a picture or two of the thing.  It’s thin enough to get in your urine stream, slippery enough to avoid capture and agile enough to work its way inside you.  Where it gorges on your blood or tissue.  And gets bigger.  So when the Chief pulled it out at the end, that’s about what it really looks like.  Hey, we do our research.  The Discovery Channel even has some web site where they do a re-enactment of the thing swimming into some poor guy.  Even that fake re-enactment gives you the willies.  At least I hope it’s fake.

So George and Izzie make the mistake of thinking they can somehow quench their desire.  That by ignoring it and saying it’s not there, they can simply move on.  Be best buddies again.  It’s not that nothing happened.  Something did.  But they think they’re strong enough and wise enough to deal with it.  It was a one time thing.  A simple mistake that can be rectified by their own determination to put it behind them. The trouble is… their desire keeps getting in the way.  And that’s why George has hit upon a new way to deal with it.  Go West, young man.  In this case…Mercy West.

It’s not just George and Izzie that suffer from this affliction.  All our couples in this episode suffer with some form of metaphorical Penis Fish – a desire that’s hooked into you and won’t let go.  Look at Derek and Meredith.  They got what they desired.  Each other.  But once you get what you want, is it really what you want?  Because, unfortunately, love isn’t just about desire. At some point it’s about other stuff, too.  Getting through the day to day.  Putting up with your partner’s snoring.  Wondering if they have, well, some kind of death wish… 

Those things tend to complicate relationships.  Eat away at them.  Make you wonder if you’re getting out of it what you put in.  How many problems can you take before the taking gets too hard?  Derek tells Meredith he doesn’t know if he can keep breathing for her.  It’s not just costing him the chiefship, it’s also…wearing him out.  She’s his Penis Fish.  Does he want to get rid of his Penis Fish?  That’s impossible, right?  It’s Meredith and Derek.  It’s just a bump in the road.  Or is it?  Well, all I can say for now is stay tuned…

Addison and Alex have been desiring each other for what seems like forever.  And we finally pay it off with a tryst in the on-call room.  How about that?  THEY FINALLY DID IT (now that deserves all capital letters).  We’ve never done a tally of the various places where our people have done it in the hospital.  I have to think the on-call room leads the way, with storage closet a close second.  But Alex clearly has major issues with girls who like him.  So he detaches himself pretty quickly from any possible entanglement.  He won’t let Addison be his Penis Fish.
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And finally Burke and Cristina.  Burke wants his relationship with Cristina to work.  He wants her to choose that wedding cake.  We know what that cake means to him when he sits down with Izzie in the conference room at the end of the episode.  This cake.  For this day.  With this woman.  And in the end, Cristina does choose a cake.  The red one.  The red velvet.  And Burke has hope again.  He’s wanted this wedding all along.  And he’s thinking, hell, maybe now she’s finally on board.  Maybe she finally wants this thing just as much as he does.  Maybe, just maybe, they’re finally heading in the right direction.  The question, of course, is does Cristina feel that way?  She loves the guy enough to have made little compromises along the way (see Stacy’s great episode last week).  But is this whole wedding thing her Penis Fish?

Okay, even though I said this blog would just be about desire and the Penis Fish, I lied.  Only because I really liked the scene at the end with Bailey and the Chief.  Where he’s leaving for the night and he runs into her filling in surgeries on the OR board for the next day.  And he’s told her earlier in the day that she has to delegate and she just can’t.  SHE CAN’T.  It’s not in her.  And, truthfully, it’s not in him either.  The question is, will Bailey suffer for that?

The answers to that question and a lot more will be coming up in the next three weeks.  I promise, it’s going to be a GREAT ride.  Next week’s our two hour episode and it’s moving and funny and all things Grey’s Anatomy.  And that’s not even the finale.  In the meantime, if you find yourself in the middle of the Amazon and you have to take a pee, stifle whatever desire you have to go in the river… and just find a nice thicket of trees or a large bush.  And that way, you can avoid being what no one desires – being another odd medical story on the Discovery Channel.   

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Mark Wilding on "Where the Boys Are"

Original Airdate: 11-09-06

Mistakes.  I’ve decided to talk about mistakes.  My mistakes.  The characters’ mistakes.  And the mistakes I made which led to the characters’ mistakes.  Already you’re probably thinking “What??  Can’t I just enjoy this blog without the stupid build-up?”  The answer is no.  Don’t worry.  Read on.  It’ll become clearer.  Last night’s episode was called “Where the Boys Are”.  Which was my first mistake. 

When I suggested that song title to the writers’ room, I got a lot of blank stares.  The Connie Francis song, I said.  You know…Someone waits for me?  A smiling face, a warm embrace?  Two arms to hold me tenderly?  And, pushing on -- despite all the puzzled looks from my fellow writers, the people who I thought would at least pretend to be supportive – I told them that what made the title so VERY, VERY clever is that the episode’s about where the boys literally are and where they are emotionally.  See?  Pretty clever, right?  Right??  Again, more blank stares.  Connie who?  Okay.  My first mistake.  Pitching very old songs to a very young writers’ room.

And now for my second mistake.  Or at least what I thought was my second mistake.  Seattle.  Yes, those pictures on your TV screen really were Seattle.  That Space Needle in the background when Derek’s sticking the Chief’s suitcase in his Jeep-looking vehicle?  That’s the real Space Needle.  We didn’t CGI it or go to LAX and shoot that futuristic looking restaurant that may or may not revolve and that could maybe look like the Space Needle if you were flying at ten thousand feet and there was enough smog that day.  And the woods?  Those are REAL SEATTLE WOODS. 

I know because I was there.  And I insisted that we fly up a crew and they be there too.   Because I thought it was really, really important that the woods look like Seattle woods – with their towering pines and moss-covered trees and mountains covered in clouds.  As opposed to the eucalyptus trees and dry brush and blue skies that you tend to find in your basic L.A. forests. 

On my first visit to the place, though, it rained.  Hard.  Really hard.  And living in L.A. where you think the weather in other parts of the country must somehow be just like L.A., I didn’t exactly come prepared.   I wore a cotton shirt, flimsy golf jacket (no hood) and sneakers.  Yes.  BIG MISTAKE.  BIG STUPID MISTAKE.  I was freezing cold and soaking wet before it was even 11:00 o’clock in the morning.  And even though the water dripping off my face looks like it could be tears, it really was just rain.  I want to clear that up because there’s a video of a soaking wet me that circulated around the Grey’s offices for the better part of a week.  I wasn’t crying.  Okay?  Still.  Letting someone film me?   A very bad mistake.  And the thought did cross my mind – if only for a second – is shooting in the rainy Seattle woods really the best idea?  Or was it a mistake? 

Then I was saved.  Our extraordinary line producer Rob Corn made it all happen.  We found the locations.  We shot great stuff.  And there was next to no rain (great job Rob!).  Plus, all the outdoor stuff looks FANTASTIC (great job director Dan Minahan and great job, Director of Photography, Herb Davis!).  So, to quote Ronald Reagan, “Mistakes were made.”  But Rob Corn saved me from those mistakes!  Thank you again, Rob. 

And now onto the actual episode...

My next mistake might have been the theme of the episode.  It was Outside/In.  Thinking you can recognize a problem by what’s on the outside while somehow underestimating or not recognizing what’s going on inside.  Yeah.  That’s a lot to bend your mind around.  For example – Jamie’s a healthy-looking young girl on the outside; on the inside she has a dead baby.  Donna isn’t happy being a man.  She wants to undergo the final step in becoming a woman so that she can finally have her outsides match her insides.  And then there’s Derek, who thinks that being outside in the woods will help him with his inner turmoil. 

Don’t get me wrong.  Outside/In was a serviceable theme.  But it might have been a mistake.  A better theme might have been “couples”.  Because, it turns out the episode revolves around couples and how happy or unhappy they are.  I didn’t really notice this until Shonda mentioned the idea of couples while we were in editing.  So now I’m running with it.  Because, hey, it’s Shonda.  It’d be a mistake not to.

So.  In no particular order.  Our couples --

Ted and Jamie -- the couple with the stillborn baby.  A happy couple.  She slipped and fell in the shower.  She made a mistake.  We never actually answer the question of whether that led to the death of the baby.  Because, at the end of the day, that didn’t seem as important as what she and Ted actually have to go through.

Vicky and her transgender husband Donna.  An unhappy couple.  Donna thinks what Vicky’s doing is a big mistake.  Deep down, she really doesn’t want her to do it.  And she ends up staying with Donna because that’s what makes her happy.

Joe and Walter.  Another happy couple.  Although by the end of the trip, Walter clearly thinks it was a mistake to have gone camping with these guys.  By the way, that scene at the river with Richard talking to Joe and realizing how much they have in common?  We almost didn’t shoot that scene because we had a full shooting schedule and I wasn’t sure if we needed it.  And not shooting that?  That would have been a TERRIBLE MISTAKE.  It’s one of my favorite scenes in the episode.

Richard and Adele.  “I miss my wife”.  What more do you have to say?

Addison and Callie.  A surprising couple.  That scene where they’re both sitting together on the floor at the end was another one of my favorites.

Cristina and Burke.  Burke’s not happy with Cristina and how she’s coming to dominate his life.  That’s why the camping trip.  But he sees the anguish that George is putting himself through with Callie and thinks he may have been a little rough on Cristina.  Which was a mistake.  He returns and they’re reconciled.  At least for now... 

Derek and Burke.  An unlikely couple.  Derek thought it would just be the two of them getting away to the mountains and now all these other bozos are tramping along after them.  And at the end of the day, being in the great outdoors didn’t really solve anything.  Except to help him realize how foolish it was to come out here in the first place.  And Burke’s not that nice to him until the end when he offers to talk about Mark Sloan.  Which doesn’t make them a couple but makes them friends… of a sort. 

Mark and Meredith.  Mark spends the whole episode telling Meredith that they’d make a better couple than she and Derek.  And Meredith’s maybe a little tempted but…talk about mistakes.  That’s certainly one she’s not about to make.  Is it?  Which leads us to…

Meredith and Derek.  Who wind up together at the end of the episode.  And as much as he thought he needed space, at the end, he’s where he’s always wanted to be.  Pressed up against Meredith.  With next to no space between them…

As for me, the next time I go to Seattle I’m bringing layers.  Lots and lots of layers.  Some mistakes you only need to make once…

From Mark Wilding, writer of "17 Seconds"

Airdate:  May 14, 2006

Okay.  You obviously saw last night’s episode.  And in a minute or so, I want to talk about it because it looks like Izzie has done a very, very bad thing.  Like a going to hell bad thing.  I want to talk about that bad thing and other bad things that people did in my episode.  I do.  But first…

…There’s a couple things you should know.  First, you should know that I’m okay with the fact this blog will have a very short lifespan.  And I mean short.  Barely 24 hours.  That’s what happens when a two hour finale follows on the heels of your episode.  That finale is tonight.  Not next Sunday night,  TONIGHT.  So cancel your plans to watch “Two and a Half Men.”  Ditch studying for that sociology final.  And forget about going to bed at 10:00 o’clock because you’re tired from staying up late to watch last night’s episode.  Because tonight is when things heat up even more.  I simply set the table for tonight’s feast.  And that feast is going to be… well,  I don’t want to give anything away, so let’s just say it’ll be very, very entertaining.   And Shonda is definitely going to have a few things to say about it in her blog tomorrow.  So really, this is just a pre-blog.  An appetizer you can digest until they bring out the roasted wild boar and thirty pound lobsters and flaming baked Alaskas (or whatever dessert lights on fire).

The second thing you should know is that I have two sisters.  I also have a brother but I’m not talking about him today.  He’s a good guy, he’s just not pertinent to this particular discussion.  Since this particular discussion involves Denny and other things in the show that my brother pretends not to care about.  But mostly it’s about Denny.  One of my sisters lives in Montreal and the other one lives in New York City.  What do they have in common besides the fact they both live back east and they’re both lucky enough to have me as a brother?  Well, they both watch the show and they both LOVE Denny.  They LOVE him.  As does my wife.  Who finally got to visit the set a few weeks ago and, with all the wonderful cast members we have, the one person she REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to meet was Denny, aka Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  She met him and, guess what, he’s also very charming in person.  I mean,  CHARMING.  As in I would understand if my wife left me for him charming.  I wouldn’t like it but I would understand it.  Luckily, that hasn’t happened.  If and when it does, you’ll be the first to know.

Anyway, my New York sister wrote me a letter a couple weeks ago that said if anything bad happened to Denny, she would never watch the show again.  Ever.  So, is what’s happened to him bad?  And more importantly, is Izzie bad for doing it?  Is she tremendously irresponsible?  She cut the LVAD wire for love so does that make her action understandable?  Or just crazy.  I mean,  Denny’s still alive, right?  (Sorry, I can’t even tell you that – tune in tonight!).   And Izzie does have a plan so it’s not like she hasn’t thought this all out.  Or has she?  Is bad, well… relative?  You see, all these questions I just asked -- they’re the things we talk about in the writers’ room.  And we don’t always have the answers.  Because too often those answers aren’t black and white.  They’re grey and they fall into cracks and it’s hard to get a hold of them because they keep just slipping out of reach.  Here’s another one -- if you do a bad thing for a really, really good reason – is it still a bad thing?  Does my sister understand that?  Or has she already stopped watching the show?

As for the other thing that might have caught your attention at the end of the episode – namely Preston Burke lying on the ground with a bullet in him – that was a bad thing.  At least none of our interns did that.  At least, directly.  Indirectly’s another story.  After all, it was Izzie’s misbehavior that led to him rushing back to the hospital.  Of course, he was being bad at the start of the episode -- punishing Cristina for falling asleep during sex by telling her she couldn’t go get the heart.  Still, it’s not like he deserved to get shot.  It’s funny, you write an episode with a theme in mind (in this case, anger management) and after you’ve filmed the thing, you start thinking about other possible themes.  Like, say, “men behaving badly”.  Petey the shooter behaves badly, Neal the bullet ducker behaves badly, Brad the boss behaves badly, Burke behaves badly and Derek is still behaving badly towards Meredith (and Addison for that matter).

As for Mer/Der… that silent scene in the elevator at the end where they have so much pain and they can’t talk to each other – well that scene originally had words.  Many words.  But Patrick Dempsey thought it would play stronger without words and he was right.  The scene started out being about anger – hence the many words -- but if you combine anger with love, you really get pain.  The pain of hating someone while still loving them.  We’re told that to hate someone is bad.  But if you love them at the same time, is it still bad?  I once had a girlfriend who used to throw tantrums in restaurants.  Yes, public tantrums.   Embarrassing, horrible public tantrums directed at me.  It was traumatic and yet it was also a little bit exciting.  The result being I loved her and hated her at the same time.  However, in the end, I just hated her.  I mean, come on, public tantrums?  That’s just bad.  By the way, my wife doesn’t have public tantrums and for that I love her.  Although, I do wish she’d get off this Denny kick. 

Anyway, I can’t talk about Burke or Denny or Meredith and Derek anymore because the more I talk about it, the more I’m tempted to give something away.  Also, these are Shonda’s characters.  “Grey’s Anatomy” is her novel.  We, the other writers, try to get into her head as best we can, but at the end of the day, she’s the one that should have the last word.  And tomorrow, she will.

And that won’t be all bad, will it?

Co-Executive Producer Mark Wilding on "Straight to the Heart"

Original Airdate 1/8/06

First of all, don’t worry.  The fact that we did a clip show – or, if you will, a highlights show -- doesn’t mean we’ve run out of ideas for episodes.  The writing staff still has a whole TON of ideas.  Funny ideas, dramatic ideas…  trust me, we’ve got it covered.  So why do a clip show?  For a couple of reasons... 

First, with this kind of show – that’s to say, semi-serialized – the thinking is that a possible NEW VIEWER might not want to watch the show because they figure, why bother, I’m already so far behind I’ll never figure out what’s going on.  So this is ABC’s way of throwing them a lifeline -- a tool for helping the uninitiated catch up with just about everything in the show up until now.  I only watched a couple episodes of “Lost” last season but, encouraged by what I saw on their clip show, I decided to take the plunge this year.  And I’m glad I did.  It’s a great show and a helluva lot of fun.

Also, a clip show is a chance for current fans to catch up on stories they may have missed in the early going.  Like, say… my mom.  Who has watched just about every episode this season (after all, she’s my mom) but missed several from last season (when I wasn’t on the show).  This way she can finally get a detailed history of, as she put it, “who jumped into bed with who and why they’re not jumping into bed with them anymore.” 

Obviously, the show’s essentially a giant recap.  It’s definitely NOT an episode.  The first thing you notice is that we didn’t even do Ellen’s voiceover.  We had it be Joe the bartender.  Just like our potential new viewers, he’s an outsider looking in.  Also, we had to leave out whole story lines.  And that’s where our job got difficult.  How do you whittle down more than 20 hours of first rate television into a single hour?  In fact, that hour is really only 42 minutes if you count the commercials.  Some of the story lines that we needed to show were pretty obvious.  The love triangle with Meredith, Derek and Addison.  Cristina’s pregnancy and relationship with Burke.  Meredith’s complicated relationship with her mom.  George’s season long crush on Meredith.  Izzie and Alex butting heads in a “will they or won’t they have sex” dance…

The result is that we lost some great story lines – Joe the bartender’s standstill operation, Bailey enduring the early stages of her pregnancy, the Chief’s brain tumor.  But all in all, I think we came up with something that gives the casual viewer a pretty thorough primer on where we’ve been and where we’re going.  And if we pick up a few more “Grey’s Anatomy” fans along the way, so much the better.  Not to mention, if it helps get my mom up to speed, then her son really will have done his job. 

From Mark Wilding, writer of "Owner of a Lonely Heart"

Episode Airdate: 12/4/05

Okay, here was my problem.  This was my first blog EVER for my first episode EVER of “Grey’s Anatomy”.  How do I make it interesting and keep you from clicking off halfway through the thing?  Especially since Harry and Gabrielle already did such a great job explaining the origins of the quint story in last week’s blog.  Then it hit me…

My episode was originally called “Little Creatures”.  After all, the show involved quintuplets AND leeches.  But that title – clever as it was -- didn’t really fit the theme of the episode, which was loneliness.  So now I had a couple of options.  I could talk about loneliness.  Or I could give you a behind the scenes look at the little creatures in my episode – namely the babies and the leeches.   Anyway, now it’s your call.  What would you rather hear about?  Loneliness or leeches?  Show of hands?  Okay… Babies and leeches it is!

Alright, leeches first.  For most of the shots we used real ones.  We had fake leeches on hand but during the course of shooting the episode we decided that, for the most part, the fake ones looked, well…fake.  Hugely fake.  Also, despite our leech handler’s best efforts, half the time you could see the monofilament that he was manipulating to make them wiggle.  Our leech handler was a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) puppeteer, so if he couldn’t make them look real, nobody could.  So when George placed the leech on the patient’s nose, that was an ACTUAL LEECH that attached itself to Timothy Bottoms’ nose.  The good news for Tim was that it wasn’t actually HIS NOSE.  It was a prosthetic filled with cow’s blood (don’t worry, it’s all AMA approved).  That way, the leech really did get some blood, it just wasn’t Tim’s.  A win-win for Tim and the leech.  Getting the leeches to bite in the first place also proved problematic.  Just because there’s the promise of a good meal doesn’t mean the leeches jump on it right away.  Leeches are fickle.  Who would’ve guessed?  That’s when our property master, Angela Whiting, figured out that they might be more likely to go for the blood if it were room temperature.  So she heated it up in a double boiler and… lo and behold… the leeches went to town.   

We did use a fake leech in the scene where the leech fell off George’s ear (when they’re full of blood, they disengorge from their victim).  Our leech handler crouched behind the bed for that shot and, when he got the cue, tugged the leech off Timothy Bottom’s ear.  That was one scene where you couldn’t see the monofilament.  By the way, all the actors were wonderful sports about handling the leeches.  Especially Tim for doing take after take while we were trying to get them to bite.  At one point, one of the leeches even fell into his mouth.  If that had been me I would have run home screaming and had a major nervous breakdown, but Tim calmly plucked it out like it was a strand of spaghetti and kept doing the scene.  Let’s see, that’s about it.  Except here’s probably the coolest leech fact Angela told me -- they take as long as six months to digest one meal. 

As for the creatures who can eat a meal and poop it out twenty minutes later -- Dorie’s premature quintuplets -- those babies were all fake.  Luckily, thanks to the good people at Creative Character Engineering, they didn’t look fake.  They looked pretty damn real (at least I thought so).  The babies are made out of some flesh-like silicone material.  When you saw them move their heads, that was done animatronically.  Our puppeteer guy went from working with the leeches to working with the preemies -- alternately using a remote control to make the little babies’ heads move or a hand pump to make their bellies go up and down.  Why fake babies?  Well, as you might imagine, real quintuplets are pretty hard to come by.  Also, babies have to be a certain age – fifteen days minimum -- before you can use them in front of a television camera.  And a lot of times TV shows go for much older “newborns”.  That’s why, when you watch any kind of TV show and see a newborn, they look HUGE.  Like they could practically walk out of their mother’s womb.

As for the episode, I hope you guys enjoyed it.  I know I enjoyed writing it.  And, let’s face it, that’s one thing you can’t fake...